Expert meeting on Global Value Chains

Gaaitzen de Vries participated in an expert meeting on the Dutch economy in Global Value Chains organized by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the recent report by De Vries and Timmer on the mutual dependence of manufacturing and services for Dutch competitiveness.

PWT 9.0: planned features and approximate release

The next version of the Penn World Table, version 9.0, is currently under development with numerous changes. There is no firm release date at this point, other than 'as soon as possible'. Our best estimate at this point will be a release in the first quarter of 2016. Read on for the features of PWT9.0

Premature deindustrialization: GGDC data in the Wall Street Journal

While advanced economies grew rich from specialising in manufacturing and employing a large share of the labor force in this sector, the research of Dani Rodrik suggests that path is no longer available to lower-income economies today. How does he know that? Thanks to the GGDC 10-sector database, on which the Wall Street Journal also draws for their article.

Trade in value added research covered on RTL-Z

Gauging the strength of the Netherlands of a trading nation and analysing where it specialises should use data on trade in value added, rather than the traditional gross trade statistics. Well-known to experts, but Marcel Timmer's research in the spotlights on RTL-Z (in Dutch) carries the message to a broader audience.

Productivity and convergence paper accepted in JoE

A paper by Robert Inklaar and Erwin Diewert on "Measuring industry productivity and cross-country convergence" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Econometrics, in a special issue on economic measurement. The paper finds that cross-country productivity convergence has mainly occurred due to fast productivity growth in the traded sector of major emerging economies, like China and India.

Manufacturing and services need each other

Gaaitzen de Vries and Marcel Timmer finished a report for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and VNO/NCW titled: “Dutch Manufacturing Competing in Global Value Chains”. The report stresses the mutual dependence of manufacturing and services for the competitiveness of the Dutch economy.

Peer-review of new FAO Agricultural Database

Reitze Gouma gave a presentation on the occasion of the launch of the FAO's new agricultural productivity database, indicating how incorporating measurement lessons from EU KLEMS would be beneficial.

Paper accepted on African inequality trends

The paper ‘Long term trends in economic inequality: Lessons from colonial Botswana 1921–1974’ written by Jutta Bolt and Ellen Hillbom (Lund University) has been accepted for publication in the Economic History Review. The show a rise and subsequent decline in income inequality over a long time horizon for this African country and argue that these trends are not related to industrialisation, but perhaps to urbanisation and the rise of the services economy.